Space Engineers

[Kelb_Panthera]

Anyone here play or want to discuss Keen Software's Space Engineers (http://store.steampowered.com/app/244850)?

I like the freedom of being able to build a vehicle to my own specs and use it to explore the worlds presented.

[factotum]

I haven't actually played the game in a year or more...this is the problem with early access stuff, I like to play the definitive version of a game and that doesn't exist when they're changing it all the time. Do they have an actual release date for the thing yet?

[Draconi Redfir]

me and a bunch of freinds bought it awhile ago and played it on and off a couple of times, but we always either get burnt out, or our worlds become obsolute and unplayable as a new patch is installed or something. plus there's still a whole bunch of bugs that need to be fixed unfortionately, least last time we checked.

[NichG]

I got back into it for a bit when they added planets, but now I've kind of run out of things to do again. Planets gave a really nice sense of progression - here's a goal, set up the infrastructure you need in order to achieve it. But once I got to space and got access to platinum, that kind of evaporated and I didn't really 'need' anything anymore.

Also, I really dislike the actual feel of dogfights/firefights, especially in single player mode where its hard to actually create distractions or multiple targets (so you end up getting focus-fired to death), so what I end up doing rather than making combat vehicles and things like that is to build a railgun at 1-2km distance and just bombard the target, which gets boring. Or make some kind of massive brick of a ship that can sit under turret fire for minutes and then just park it and let it chew up the target with its own turrets. It might still be fun to program AI-controlled drones to follow you around and provide support (and ostensibly this should be feasible with the built-in C# controllers that have been provided). Given the limits of sensor blocks though, it seems like it might not be feasible to get sane performance out of that (maybe something with laser antennas to create a kind of GPS? I dunno...)

Anyhow, I'm back to wanting more progression. Some reason why I should bother actually taking on fortified pirate bases or landing on a moon rather than just scarfing down asteroids once I get to space.

Incidentally, crashing a space elevator is a fun way to crash your computer as well. I made a 4km tall tower of blocks and cut the base block, and the thing basically tunnels into the voxel grid of the planet and scatters a bunch of one-voxel holes in the interior. This essentially messes up the compression algorithm they use to actually store voxel data in a reasonable amount of space, so as it proceeds you basically get totally locked up to the point where you can't even load the game again. Until that happens, its really fun to watch though.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I haven't actually played the game in a year or more...this is the problem with early access stuff, I like to play the definitive version of a game and that doesn't exist when they're changing it all the time. Do they have an actual release date for the thing yet?

Not yet. They're just now moving towards the end of alpha development. Planet's are a thing. IMO they're quite beautiful. Fun for exploration and development. It'd be nice if they included more and smarter NPC.... thingies.

[Capac Amaru]

I'm actually writing a machinima made in Space Engineers at the moment. Link is in the signature if anyone wants to check it out.

I didn't really get into Space Engineers all that much, but since working on this series and having a purpose to drive towards, I've been getting a lot of enjoyment out of it.